Spoiler alert This review reveals vital details about the plot or should that be, the device used for the film.

A strange series of murders occurs around a bay.

This is one of Mario Bava’s best known films and also one of his most violent. I first learn of it whilst studying film at university. One of the modules I took was on the horror genre (as if I wouldn’t have chosen that module!) and part of it was on giallo.

Bay of Blood features a plot device that was way ahead of it’s time and even goes one step further than the slasher genre it helped formulate. Basically, the film features a murder being committed, then another killer kills the perpetrator of the previous murder. This happens time and time again throughout the film until we see the final murderers- two children who accidentally kill the previous murderer with a loaded gun that they mistake for a toy.

Bay of Blood was called ‘Ecologia del delitto’ in Italy but also had the more apt title ‘Reazione a catena’ which translates as ‘chain reaction’.

Bay of Blood isn’t a one note movie though. The premise ingeniously stitches together brilliantly executed (pun not intened) murders being carried out by interesting characters and more style than you could shake a machete at (you can expect the word ‘style’ to be used a lot throughout my upcoming reviews of giallo movies).

This is where the influence of the film gets interesting. In America the film was retitled as both ‘Carnage’ and then ‘Twitch of the Death Nerve’ in the late 70’s. It was the film’s latter incarnation that seems to have caught the attention of the makers of the first Friday the 13th movies. There are murders in Bay that would be almost replicated in Fridays 1 and 2. The throat slashing, axes to the face and a couple being impaled with a spear from the first two films appear to be strikingly similar to murders in Bay of Blood. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…

Bay of Blood would be rejected by the BBFC for cinema release in 1972, be banned on video (under the title Blood Bath) during the Video Nasties moral panic and then be released in 1994 by the Redemption labels with cuts. We’d have to wait until 2010 for it to see the light of day uncut.

Bay of Blood is a fantastic horror movie and a great introduction to the brilliance of Giallo in general.

4.5 out of 5 stars